I woke up at 10:30. I slept really well, except I couldn’t get the AC working so it was 26 degrees in my room in the morning, just like the tent. Got down to the reception and via Google Translate she told me I had to use the TV remote to start it. The setting on the wall was heating, duh!
The others had been out dancing last night so we tried to coordinate where and when to meet. Jonas’s phone started to do a system update before he answered and that took longer than usual so we got a bit worried. In the end, everyone got connected and we headed to the Seoul Sky, a large tower with a great view. It took us longer than it should have to find each other on the site, to our defense, it was a huge mall. It turned out we were on different levels in the building 🙂 So the group consisting of me, Jonas, Maja, Harald, Micaela, and Fredrik walked to the ticket office for Seoul Sky but they told us that the visibility at the top was limited at the time, and the prognosis for the rest of the day wasn’t that good either. So we took off to find something to eat instead.
We found a café called Aquagarden, where you could have a fika in an amazing environment! Aquariums are everywhere with fishes and turtles in different sizes. We got our table but just as we sat down staff came and asked us to move to another table. Not a biggie, but as compensation we got to choose three bagels from the menu for free. I won’t say no to that!
We ate and drank our fika and had a great time. We also visited a small shop where they had, apart from some fish, small ornaments. Glass containers with some vegetation, and a couple of decorations in them. So beautiful! I asked one of the staffers if they delivered to Sweden, but he told me the customs would stop it because it was live plants. I have to see if anyone in Sweden is doing the same thing, they are really cool!
After we had our fika and looked at all the fish we set off to visit Gangnam, famous for the song Gangnam Style by the Korean artist Psy. It currently has almost 5 billion plays on YouTube.
We took the subway and then after a couple of misses in the navigation we found Gangnam Square.
Next up was the “Gangnam Hands”, a tribute to the song. However, it was on the other side of the area so we started walking. Took a while but I had a nice talk with Micaela about life choices, travel, pension (of course ;)), and many other subjects on the way. We finally found our golden hands and took the mandatory picture.
The next objective was to get some food! We had earlier spoken about getting hamburgers so of course, we started to look for McDonalds. The app said there was one close by so we took off to find it. Found a map in the nearby mall which made no sense so we kept looking. Finally found it and managed to find the button for English on the terminal so we could order our food. I guess it tasted like in Sweden, but it was quite nice to get some, to me, “normal” food.
After this, I left the group to find some spices for my neighbor Cida who takes care of my cats while I’m gone. I found a small mart and asked the clerk if he spoke any English, very little, was the answer. I showed him the picture and he went looking but couldn’t find any. So I asked for a large supermarket and he found a “Homeplus” for me and I got the directions. After a 15-minute bus ride, I stepped into a large building with several floors of shopping, with one floor with food. I would say the size was about as an ICA Kvantum in Sweden. Again, I asked one of the staff if they could point me in the right direction and she showed me the shelf it was on. She tried to explain something about it but I didn’t understand a word so I just smiled and thanked her 🙂
Anyhow, it looked like the stuff on the picture I had and Google Translate seemed to confirm it. Did some quick googling to see if I’m allowed to bring this into Singapore and Indonesia, but it seemed like it shouldn’t be a problem. Fingers crossed!
On my way back to the hotel I saw the logo Lotte World Mall which I thought, would be cool to visit, just to realize that it was exactly where we were this morning. I also saw that the weather had cleared up around the tower, so I went in and bought myself a ticket up to the top. I got the warning it was only a 3 km visibility, but when I got to the top floor, it was good enough.
In contrast to other “observation platforms”, this had five floors you could go between, with several cafés and souvenir shops. Quite a lot of people, and many of the windows were “busy” but not crowded to move around.
I walked around for an hour and found a sketch artist who drew paintings of people. That would be a fun and unique memory I thought so I went for one. Spitting image, ey? 🙂
On one of the floors, they had a small band playing some live music. They had a small crowd sitting in front and it was rather nice as background music. Because of the open space going several floors up you could hear it almost everywhere.
When I felt done I took the elevator down again and headed for the subway to get back to the hotel. By the way, I must mention the subway. They have lots of signs, both in Korean and in English, which makes it easy to navigate within the stations. All exits are numbered so if you want to meet up somewhere you can just name the exit. And there are directions from the platform, all the way to the exit.
And it’s not just physical signs. All this data exists digitally, so the Naver Map App can tell you which exit to use to get to/from the hotel. Since there are platform doors (separating the train from the platform), and they know where they are, and where the stairs or escalators are, the app can tell you, which door you should use to have as fast transfer as possible upon arrival. So you can walk the distance while waiting for the train, instead of walking after the train ride.
I guess this is something commuters learn pretty fast, but when you are going somewhere new or as I am, a tourist, it’s nice to have the information and you can decide if you want to use it or not. I’ve taken the subway a few times now and often the wait hasn’t been that long, but a couple of times it has been 10-15 minutes. And if that’s the case, if you can make an earlier train by shortening the walk at the transfer station, that’s a good thing.
I got back to the hotel and started to research some Korean BBQ restaurants for a final dinner in Seoul tomorrow. Most of the data and reviews seem old so I’ve found a couple of candidates that I’m going to check out tomorrow. I’m also meeting Lenke from the Netherlands for lunch, nice to see her again.
Dammit, the clock has run away again, another relatively late night. No rest on the vacation 🙂
Oj jättemycket att ta in, som jag skrev förut måste läsa flera gånger och upptäcker mer info varje gång. Vad bra att det är tydliga skyltar ser att till och med jag skulle kunna hitta fram. Snygg bild men du tappade några år tror jag men bättre så än tvärt om.